Remember Tuesday Morning (15 page)

Besides, Alex needed to be as inconspicuous as possible. No police dog, and no way he could let Owl or any of the others see his truck. A guy interested in joining the REA wouldn’t think of driving a Dodge Ram. If anyone from the group suspected he was an infiltrator, they’d guess right away he was a cop. Everything he’d been working toward, the knowledge of the REA’s headquarters, their plans for burning down custom homes, all his work would be gone in a single instant. His life could even be in danger. That’s why he’d cased the area. At first he’d thought about parking in the strip mall at the corner of Kanan and T.O. Blvd. but at this hour the shops would be closed, leaving his truck way too visible.

Instead, he’d gone on Google Earth and found the perfect spot, a paved area nestled between the trees at the south end of the football stadium at Agoura High. Alex turned right on Argos Street and there it was, Chumash Park on his right, the high school on his left. The meeting spot was on the far side of the park, so even if Owl and the others were there, they would be near the picnic tables — out of view from his driving route down Argos.

Here we go
, he thought.
Don’t make a mistake.
He turned left into the school’s back service road and wound his way up toward the stadium. The spot was perfect. A person couldn’t see the truck from five feet away, let alone from across the street. He killed the engine and rehearsed his plan again. While he did, he slipped a pistol into his ankle holster and made sure his other guns were in place. Then he donned a hooded navy sweatshirt and slipped out of his work boots. He’d brought old leather sandals for the occasion — so he’d look the part a little better.

Finally, he pulled a miniature tape recorder from his glove box. The thing could pick up a conversation from twenty yards away. Alex had no doubt it would do the trick tonight. He needed proof of the meeting, so he could share it with his superiors. The information might never be admissible in court, but at least it would help Clay and Joe get the SWAT team on these guys. Before they lit a match to start their next fire.

He climbed out of the truck, shut the door, and slid his way through a few yards of brush, over a fence, and over a hill. Just like that, he was back on Argos. The street was empty as he jogged across and stayed to the right, cutting across the top of the park and then down Medea Valley Drive toward the picnic area. Alex slowed his pace, slipped his hand in his pocket, and started the recorder. At the same time, he checked his watch. Five minutes till nine.

Calm, Alex … be calm. This is a war …
no room for hesitation. He exhaled and lifted his sweatshirt hood into place just as the first picnic table came into view. Sure enough, there were three men sitting at the table. Alex felt his heart skip a couple beats, then slam back into some kind of hyperrhythm.
Calm … calm …

One of the men shifted his attention toward Alex, and the other two did the same. Alex forced himself to play the role, pretend he was truly interested in connecting with the REA. He kept his hands empty and at his sides as he approached the table.

“Danny?” The closest of the three men stood.

Alex glanced over one shoulder, then the other, and suddenly it occurred to him that he’d made a colossal mistake. So he was armed, so what? He was meeting with crazed felons in a dark park without backup of any kind, without a cell phone or a radio. What if this was an ambush? Alex refused to give the possibility further thought. It was too late for that. He motioned to the bald man. “You Owl?”

A slight breeze rustled the leaves of the trees overhead. The man shifted nervously, and behind him the backs of the others tensed. The short guy shrugged. “You need more than that.”

More than that?
Panic tried to grab at Alex, but he dodged it. “Green Night.”

The man held out his hand. “Owl.” He stopped short of smiling.

“Danny.”

“Glad you could make it.”

He wasn’t sure whether to sit or not, so he stayed standing. If for some reason this
was
an ambush, he’d have a better chance on his feet. With a quick glance at the others, he noted everything he could about their appearances — everything he could determine at a dark picnic table in a matter of seconds. Owl had a week’s growth on his unshaven face, and he was easily the youngest of the three. Of the other two, the shorter one was completely bald, and the taller one had neatly combed short dark hair and wire-rimmed glasses. Alex had no guarantee about this meeting or how long it would last. His observations needed to happen fast.

“Why the REA?” the one with the glasses nodded at Alex. His eyes looked hard and unflinching.

Alex needed to think fast, think like an ecoterrorist. “The REA’s not really a group, right? I mean, it’s a mind-set.” He hooked his thumbs into his front pockets and stayed confident. “The more of us who act, the greater the chance people will notice.” He gave a shrug that said the things he was explaining were obvious. “Civil disobedience has been a part of societal change since the days of the Boston Tea Party.”

The air around them was still tense, but he saw the two at the table relax their posture a little. “We don’t have long.” The bald guy focused hard on Alex. The chip on his shoulder seemed only slightly smaller than his ego. “We’re looking for people to run reconnaissance for us. A few housing tracts.”

Alex could hardly believe he was taping this conversation. “Owl tells me you’re looking at the Oak Canyon Estates.”

The two on the table looked at each other — then at Owl. They wore buttoned-down oxfords and dark slacks — like they’d just gotten off work at a bank or an insurance office.

“Danny guessed.” Owl’s lower lip twitched, and his voice rose a notch. “Not like I just brought it up.”

The tall bespectacled man was still looking at Alex. “Owl talks too much.” He leaned closer. “You talk and we kill you. Get it?”

Alex ignored that. “So it’s the OCE, that’s what’s next?”

“The OCE is ours. You’ll start small. Find the next possible targets.”

“Right.” The bald one piped in. “You’ll report to Owl.”

“What am I looking for? Homes only, or SUV’s?” Alex’s heart pounded harder, fueled by a combination of fear and thrill. “I could take out an SUV every night after work.”

“The REA is more methodical than that.” The tall guy bristled. “You’ll do only what we tell you to do.”

His buddy nodded. “Or it isn’t the REA.”

Owl looked nervous, uneasy. Alex had the suspicion that maybe Owl wasn’t as committed as the other two, as if he was maybe in over his head here and didn’t know how to cut himself free. If he was right, Owl could be a help to him down the road. Alex was about to ask what they’d already accomplished and how long it had taken to plan those attacks, when a small sedan drove slowly by the park, along the street closest to them.

Immediately, Owl took a step back, and the other two stood. “Meeting’s done.” The guy with the glasses started walking in the opposite direction of the car.

The driver of the car was either part of the REA or someone undercover, a detective from the sheriff’s department watching them. Either way, the three said nothing as they left the picnic table and hurried through a cluster of trees. Alex took a different route, straight across the field toward the far end of the park. He wasn’t sure what happened to the slow-moving sedan, but he heard no sounds of a car. Was he crazy to be out here when he was on mandatory leave? He reached into his pocket and clicked the tape recorder shut so it wouldn’t pick up his racing heart. If the information he’d gathered tonight was ever going to be used, he would really have to work to convince people why he’d done this.

When he was sure he wasn’t being followed, he crossed the street, pushed his way through the bushes, back over the fence and climbed into his truck. The service road he’d driven in on led back to the freeway a different way, so that he could avoid crossing paths with any of them.

Alex was halfway to the freeway when he finally caught his breath.
Stupid, Alex … so stupid
. A cop should never make himself that vulnerable. He grabbed a piece of gum from the center console and shoved it in his mouth. It was one thing to be driven to get the bad guys, to protect the citizens of the city in a way that would’ve made his father proud. But it was another to be so careless that he got himself killed. He’d have to keep his discussions with Owl to the phone. He could tape those conversations a lot easier.

It was just after ten o’clock when he pulled off the freeway and drove the last few miles home, and only then did he think once more about Jamie Michaels and the things she’d told him, the sad truth about her first husband and the bit about his journal. But more than that, something else she’d told him weighed heavily on his mind. The part about her praying for him. Not because he wanted to think about God or allow himself to believe again, but because if there had ever been a time when he could almost sense that someone had been praying for him, it was tonight.

F
IFTEEN

J
amie found the woman’s phone number by contacting a few of her friends back in New York — Jake’s former captain, Aaron Hisel, and her good friend, Sue Henning. As it turned out, Sue had spent time with Linda Brady at an FDNY wives’ support group in the first few years after 9/11. Back when Jamie spent all her spare time at St. Paul’s. She had dialed the number as she sat at the Lazy J Park and watched Sierra and CJ play on this early October afternoon. The conversation with Sue was long overdue, the way it was when best friends let half a year pass between hellos.

“I’m seeing someone.” Sue’s voice was brimming with the sort of hope and new life that hadn’t been there since her husband Larry’s death. “He’s a police officer. We met at church.” She paused. “We’re talking about getting married.”

Jamie listened as she sat on a bench close to where the kids were playing, enjoying the sun on her face. “Ah, Sue … I’m so glad.” She didn’t need to comment on the fact that they’d both found police officers, or that God had a way of knowing which women could be married to men who put their lives on the line every time they went to work. That much was obvious. She pictured her friend, sitting near the front window of her house in Staten Island. “How are the kids?”

“Katy’s eleven, same as Sierra. She still talks about her and has that BFF photo of the two of them on her dresser.”

“Sierra has hers too.” Jamie smiled. “What about little Larry?”

Sue’s lighthearted laughter filled the phone lines. “He doesn’t like the little part, anymore. He’s eight now. Tallest kid in the second grade.”

“We need to get back there, get everyone together.” Jamie meant it. Sue and Larry had been her and Jake’s best friends before 9/11. The couples spent their free time together and had everything in common. After their husbands were killed, Jamie wasn’t sure she would’ve survived without Sue.

“How are you and Clay?”

“He’s wonderful … so patient with me.” She took in a long breath and went into the story about Alex and his determination to keep people out of his life. “I feel like Alex is part of Jake’s legacy, somehow. Like Clay and I are supposed to reach him and tell him about God, you know? Help him find the healing he’s missing.”

They talked for another ten minutes about Sue’s new guy and Jamie’s love for Clay, and about the kids.

“I think Katy’s starting to forget.” Sue’s voice was tinged with a sorrow she’d long since made peace with. “She doesn’t talk about Larry like she used to, and when we see a picture of our family back then, she squints at it, like she can’t really place the details.”

“It’s that way with Sierra too. I noticed the changes a few years ago — the details aren’t crisp like before.”

“Still,” Sue drew in an encouraging sigh, “God is good. He’s taught us all how to live with our losses, and He’s given us new people to love.”

“Yes, He has.” Jamie liked the way that sounded.
New people to love.
Healing was definitely happening when people could find their way out of the dark clouds of grief to love again. Further proof that Alex hadn’t gone more than a few steps on the mile-long journey to healing.

The two made a plan to talk again, sooner this time, and Jamie made Sue promise to send an invitation if there was, indeed, a wedding in the works. Before they hung up, Jamie pulled a pen and piece of paper from her purse and jotted down Linda’s number. When the call was over, Jamie spent a few minutes relieving Sierra, pushing CJ in his swing while Sierra took the swing beside them.

“Higher, Mommy! So high, okay?”

“Okay, buddy.” Jamie grinned at Sierra. “He could swing for an hour and never get tired.”

“Tell me about it.” Sierra dropped her shoulders forward, as if she was already exhausted from pushing CJ for the past ten minutes. Then she straightened and her eyes began to dance. “Did I tell you the boys are chasing us at school again?” She made a face, but the sparkle in her eyes remained. She was in fifth grade, and already the talk between them turned to boys fairly often. “We four girls found a hiding place, though. On the other side of the school by the baseball field.”

“That’s good.” Jamie studied her daughter, the way her face still held a strong resemblance to Jake’s. “Boys can wait awhile.”

Sierra giggled. “That’s what Daddy says.”

Jamie smiled, because with Sierra’s words, Sue’s statement came rushing back. The part about God giving them new people to love. The fact that Sierra would have not one, but two wonderful fathers in her lifetime was more than Jamie could have asked for.

“Slide!” CJ pointed to the climbing structure and a couple of built-in slides across the sandy play area. “Out, Mommy! Peeeese!”

She lifted him from his swing. “Can you go with him, Sierra, sweetie? I have one more phone call, okay?”

“Sure.” She stood up from the swing and took hold of CJ’s hand. “I like the slides too, right, Ceej?”

“Yay!” He strained forward, pulling her along behind him. “Come on, Sissy … come on!”

Jamie made her way back to the bench, all the while watching her kids as they walked toward the nearest slide. She found the phone number on the slip of paper and punched in the numbers on her cell phone. As the phone began to ring, she uttered a last-minute prayer, asking God to help her reach Linda Brady, and that, in the process, some sort of wisdom might come of the conversation, wisdom that might help her and Clay reach Alex.

The woman answered the phone almost on the first ring. “Hello, this is Linda.” She sounded upbeat and lighthearted.

Jamie leaned back against the hard park bench. “Linda, this is Jamie Michaels, formerly Jamie Bryan. I think our husbands used to work together for the FDNY.”

“Who?” A short pause filled the phone lines. Then Linda sucked in a quick breath. “Oh, wait. Jamie Bryan … Jake’s wife. Sue Henning told me about you. Sue’s Larry and your Jake were at the same station.”

“Right.” Sudden tears stung Jamie’s eyes, and she dabbed at them with her wrist. When it came to losing Jake, there was an ocean of tears in her heart, and whether she liked it or not, she was never more than a few minutes from the beach. She sniffed silently and composed herself. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“Not at all. I’m a nurse now, and I work later today, but not for a while.”

Jamie felt herself relax. “Okay, good.” She wasn’t quite sure where to begin. “Did Sue tell you I remarried?”

“No.” A smile filled Linda’s voice. “I haven’t been to a support group meeting for years now. I think a lot of us are remarried.”

The news surprised Jamie for some reason. “You’re remarried?”

“Three years ago.” Some of the joy in her tone fell off. “Not that life is ever normal again.”

“No.” Jamie smiled at CJ, just about to go down the slide. “It’s beautiful, but never really normal.” She slid to the edge of the bench, willing herself to get to the point. “Anyway, I live in LA now, and my husband is a sergeant with the LA Sheriff’s Department. His name is Clay Michaels. He works with your son, Alex.”

It took a moment before Linda responded. “Your husband knows Alex?”

“We both do. Alex has been coming to our house for dinner once a month for the last year.”

“I … I had no idea.” A hint of bitterness now colored her voice. “He doesn’t tell me anything about his life in California.”

Jamie kept her eyes on Sierra and CJ, still on the play structure. She didn’t figure now was a great time to tell the woman about Alex’s role in the hostage situation, or the fatally shot suspect. “He’s still very hurt. Very closed off.”

“Yes. He hasn’t moved past the loss of his father. That’s why he’s out there fighting crime. Just him and his dog.” She hesitated. “Is he … is he seeing anyone? He never talks about that with me.”

“Not that we can tell.” Jamie told her about Jake’s journal and how she’d found the entry about Ben. “I guess he and Jake were talking about Ben’s favorite Bible verse.”

“John 16:33.” Linda didn’t hesitate. “Did you tell Alex about the entry?”

“He wouldn’t let me.” The defeat was still there in Jamie’s voice, but it was tempered by a new sense of hope. Certainly his mother would be able to shed some light on the young man. “He told me that getting past 9/11 was different for me because I have Clay, and that made me think … was there someone for Alex … a special girl? Before the terrorist attacks?”

Linda sighed. “There was. Her name was Holly Brooks. She and Alex dated from their freshman year on, right up until that awful day during their senior year of high school.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know. A part of Alex died that day. The part capable of trusting and loving.”

The thought was so sad. Again, Jamie felt her eyes grow damp. “Do you still talk to her?”

“Actually, she moved to LA. Works for a developer, at least she used to. I have her information written down somewhere.” Linda’s cheerful tone was all but gone. “Alex loved that girl with his whole being. I always thought if someone could find the old Alex in the pile of debris left after the collapse of those towers, it would be Holly. She went to LA because of Alex.”

The flicker of hope in Jamie burned a little brighter. “Then they’ve talked.”

“Just once, as far as I know. Alex turned her away. Told her he could never give her the life or the love she deserved. His only purpose in life was his police work. Making his dad proud, doing his part to prevent the murder of other people’s fathers.”

Jamie’s heart hurt listening to the details. No wonder Alex’s eyes were full of so much pain. He’d lost more than his father; he’d put aside his girl and his future … everything that had mattered for the first eighteen years of his life. “How did Holly take it?”

“I haven’t talked to her in a year or so. She left me a message a few months ago that she’s seeing someone, trying to move on. The whole thing’s so sad.”

Jamie’s mind raced. “You said you had her information somewhere? Do you think you could give it to me? Maybe she could help Clay and me understand him better, the way he used to be?”

The slight chuckle that came from Linda was more hopeless than humorous. “It’s too late for that, but … well, I don’t think she’d mind if you had her information. At least her work number.”

This was what Jamie had prayed for, a breakthrough, some new way she could reach Alex. She silently prayed while Linda looked for the details.

“Here we go.” Linda sounded doubtful. “She works for a developer named Dave Jacobs.” Linda rattled off the girl’s work number. “I’ll say this … if you and Clay care enough about my son to do this, then my husband and I will be praying. That’s all I can do for him anymore.” A crack in her voice betrayed the depth of her heartache. “Seven years ago, I lost my husband and my son, all on the same day. Since then I’ve prayed for a breakthrough and maybe … maybe somehow this is it.”

The phone call ended with Jamie promising to keep in touch with Linda, and to pass along updates about how Alex was doing or if he was making any progress. When Jamie slipped her phone back into her purse, she thought about this Holly Brooks, a girl so in love with Alex she had moved across the country to follow him. Suddenly, in the warmth of the afternoon sun, Jamie was convinced of two things: First, God was indeed leading her to work on behalf of Alex’s healing, as a part of Jake’s legacy and her own. And second, she needed to make a call to Holly Brooks, to see if she could help them understand Alex a little better. At the same time, maybe Jamie could determine whether Holly had moved on and found love elsewhere. Because maybe, Jamie suspected, just maybe, she was still longing for the striking young deputy who had captured her heart when she was just a girl.